by Layla Nash
He might have stood there forever if Violet hadn’t raised her eyebrows in challenge and pointed at the door behind him. “Go rest, Wyzak. The captain will need your assistance figuring out what to do about the Tyboli. The guest and I will be fine.”
He didn’t believe her. He didn’t want to let Gemma out of his sight, particularly with the number of unmated males on the ship. He still hesitated, staring at Gemma and willing her to look at him, to ask him to stay. But her attention stayed pointedly elsewhere, and Wyzak clenched his jaw. He had a right to vengeance, and yet he’d brought her drinks and spoken gently with her instead, and in repayment, she ignored him.
Violet gave him a dark look and he growled in irritation, but took the hint and retreated to the hall. The door slid shut behind him, leaving the captain’s mate with Gemma. Nokx grinned at him, entertained by whatever he thought he’d seen, and Wyzak grabbed double handfuls of the kid’s uniform so he could throw him against the wall. “What?”
Nokx didn’t blink. “Nice to see you so concerned about the welfare of others, is all.”
Wyzak scowled at him. Despite a rough background as a bare-knuckle boxer in the worst parts of the universe, Nokx had retained his laid-back and joking personality, which was part of why Faros liked to keep him around. It irritated Wyzak, though, when he was the butt of the joke. “I do not find this amusing.”
“I’m sure you don’t, boss,” the younger Xaravian said. He didn’t even look uncomfortable, dangling a foot off the floor with Wyzak’s fists in his chest, and only tilted his head to the side. “Want to fight it out? If you don’t wish to rest, that is.”
Rest was the furthest thing from his mind. Wyzak dropped Nokx and stepped back, grunting, before stalking toward the gym. “Yes. We fight.”
The other Xaravian was far more talkative than Wyzak had planned, though, and Nokx waited just a few steps before swinging his arms and saying, “So about the girl...”
“Do not.”
“Thought she tried to kill you not too long ago, boss. What happened on that ship before we showed up to help?”
It was the last thing he wanted to talk about, particularly with Nokx. “The Tyboli attacked. Things changed. I do not wish to discuss it.”
“Right.” Nokx opened the door to the gym and waved him through. “What are we going to do with her? She’s a bounty hunter and working for the Tyboli. Faros can’t mean to keep her here on the ship.”
“It’s too early to decide.” Wyzak tilted his head, cracking his neck, and rotated his shoulders to get limber. Fighting with Nokx required all of his skill and concentration, since the kid fought dirty and with an intensity completely at odds with his genial attitude. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by thoughts of Gemma in her quarters, talking about the stars-only-knew what with Violet.
Nokx grunted and shed his outer robes and shirt, starting his own haphazard stretching. “You could probably get good money for her, trading her to someone. Bounty hunters aren’t well-loved, and—”
Wyzak cut him off with a hand around his throat, and moved fast enough that even the street fighter didn’t react in time to dodge. “Do not suggest such a thing.”
The other Xaravian held his hands up in surrender. “I take it back.”
He grunted and released him, shaking himself to try and get rid of the itch between his shoulderblades. Wyzak didn’t like feeling out of control, and Gemma sent him into a tailspin he couldn’t see the end of. There wasn’t any reason to feel so protective of her, and yet...
Nokx grinned and bounced on his feet as he moved out of arm’s reach, holding his fists up in preparation. “So she’s going to stick around, then. Suppose Violet would want a pal on the ship. We’ll have to go through all the data we took from the bounty hunters’ ship; it sounds like a lucrative business. Maybe if we find the right bounties, we won’t have to board random ships all the time. New business trajectory for the Sraibur, hmm?”
Wyzak grunted and squared off. He needed to burn through the liquor and nervous energy and residual distraction of Gemma’s mouth against his. It wasn’t any use to be distracted by the Earther. She’d responded to him, to his kiss, but the moment they were interrupted... she turned to stone in his arms.
He ducked a lazy swing and landed a punch against Nokx’s ribs. He needed to learn more about Gemma, about who she was and where she came from, before he got too tied up in whether he wanted her to stay. Wyzak scowled and tried harder to wipe the smirk off the other Xaravian’s face. It didn’t matter if he wanted Gemma. He’d wanted her in the bar on that damn spaceport before she’d drugged him. It didn’t mean anything. It was just that his interest had been interrupted by being tossed in her brig and almost handed over to the Tyboli.
There was no reason to suspect his interest in Gemma was any longer-term than however long it took him to talk her into his bed. That was it. Mere physical attraction and the mating urge. He could get her out of his system and then they would part ways on whatever neutral spaceport they left her on. Easy enough. It would be a fine vengeance—seducing her, having her, and then leaving her somewhere. It would even the score between them well enough.
Wyzak braced for a long, bruising fight as Nokx landed a solid punch on his jaw and knocked Wyzak back a few steps. Maybe the fight was just what he needed to get his mind off the troublesome Earther in the makeshift brig.
Chapter 17
Gemma
Gemma’s head whirled and she couldn’t tell if it was the liquor or Wyzak’s kiss that set her thoughts spinning. Either way, she managed to keep most of her attention on the other Earther who stood in the room with her. The tall woman looked only mildly interested as she leaned against the wall and studied her. “So you’re the bounty hunter. I’m Violet Newfield. I’m…in a relationship with the captain of this ship.”
“A relationship?” Gemma tried not to smirk. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’re still negotiating what the hell we call each other.” The woman’s expression soured somewhat, and Gemma filed that away for a later conversation. She couldn’t help but wonder how one negotiated relationship status with a Xaravian. Violet rolled her eyes and patted at her hair, clearly uncomfortable with the issue herself. “That’s neither here nor there, except that I’m on this ship and arrived here under similar circumstances. So I’m sympathetic to your plight, to a degree.”
“To a degree?” Gemma tried to find a more comfortable position sitting on the bunk, and wobbled as the liquor unsettled her stomach and the rest of her balance. Drinking that much had been a terrible idea. It hadn’t even dulled the pain of losing Milo and the Memphis.
And it sounded like the crew of the Sraibur made it a habit to kidnap females. Which didn’t bode well for her future on the ship.
“Well, I cannot overlook the fact that you kidnapped one of my crewmates and intended to hand him over to a group of bastards who would have killed him or worse.”
Gemma sighed and scrubbed at her face with her non-mech hand. “Look, it’s just a job. It’s not personal.”
“So you normally suck face with targets in your job?”
She winced. It was a fair hit, though. “That was... a mistake.”
Violet’s eyebrow arched. “Uh-huh. What do you call yourself, then? Other than unprofessional.”
Ouch. “Gemma. Bounty hunter. Former bounty hunter. I don’t know what else.”
The other woman nodded. “I suspected you might be looking at a career change.”
“Most of that depends on what your ill-defined significant other has planned for me,” Gemma said. Maybe she could get some useful information from the Earther. If the woman was sympathetic enough, she might assist Gemma in escaping the ship or at least negotiating a neutral resolution to the current conflict. The pirates had already destroyed her ship and livelihood, so it wasn’t like they hadn’t punished her. There wasn’t any reason for anyone to get tortured or beaten.
“He hasn’t decided anything yet,” Viole
t said. A hint of a smile played across her face as she glanced around the room, then she went to the door and retrieved a panel from the wall. “You’re going to need something to eat if you expect to function in a few hours. I don’t know what possessed you to drink that poison that Wyzak was carrying around, but if you meant to punish yourself, you’re on the right road.”
Gemma propped her legs up on the cot and watched Violet fiddle with the panel. “Something to dull the pain in the present. I’m not as worried about the future.”
“Oh?” Violet sounded only vaguely interested. “That’s too bad. We don’t have much Earther food in the galley, since these guys only like Xarav cuisine, but I’ve convinced Faros to expand the culinary options at least a bit when to comes to proteins and things not covered in extremely spicy shit. Let’s get some food in you and figure out what the hell we’re going to do.”
“We?” Gemma didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but she sure as hell wasn’t used to people going out of their way to help her. She’d been totally prepared for tricking the woman into being on her side or at least maneuvering Violet into inadvertently helping, but for the other Earther to just offer... Something wasn’t right. “What do you mean, ‘we’? Why is there a ‘we’?”
Violet blinked politely and went to the panel to retrieve a covered tray as it arrived through some fancy delivery system in the wall. Gemma’s mouth watered as the scent of roasted meat filled the small room. All of her attention went to the tray of food—steaks, a decent approximation of mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, some unidentified vegetables, and a pile of rice. It had been ages since she’d had decent food that she hadn’t overpaid for on one of those damn spaceports. Somehow the price always affected how much she enjoyed the meal.
Violet passed the tray over and gestured for Gemma to help herself. “You eat, I’ll talk. There’s a ‘we’ because we’re both Earthers and female, and there’s only two of us on this ship. Whether we like it or not, we’re a ‘we,’ at least as far as these males are concerned.”
Gemma hardly heard her as all of her focus went to the steaks. Even though she suspected they weren’t actual Earther beef, it still tasted close enough that she closed her eyes and hummed in appreciation. It brought back far too many memories, but for once... she almost didn’t mind. When she managed to look at Violet, waiting for the other woman to talk, she found her attention focused on Gemma’s left arm and the metal fingers that clutched the fork hovering above the plate.
Gemma hunched her shoulders and kept all of her attention on the plate, wanting to ignore everything about her arm for a little while longer. “You said you had something to talk about?”
“How’d you lose the arm?”
She tensed. People didn’t usually just ask about it. They stared or hinted or edged around it. At least Violet wasn’t the kind to whisper or point. That made it a little easier. “Transporter door malfunctioned and closed too early. Took it off.”
“Hmm. At least you weren’t on the other side, right? Or the arm would be fine and the rest of you would be in space.” Violet’s head tilted as she studied the metal arm, and Gemma tensed more. Usually there was some effort at sympathy or a shared story about some relative with an infirmity, something she’d have to listen to and nod along with... But the other Earther gestured at the arm, not even hiding that she still studied the metal monstrosity. “I haven’t seen one like that. Was it an early prototype? Normally they come covered with skin.”
“Yeah.” Some of the tension in Gemma’s shoulders eased. The woman wasn’t playing any game that Gemma recognized, and the straightforwardness made it easier to respond without being concerned about hurting feelings or ruining a working relationship. There was no relationship to ruin, at least not yet. So they might as well get it all out of the way.
“The kind of company I worked for wasn’t entirely legal and didn’t exactly want a documented accident, and since I would have died if they hadn’t done something, I ended up being passed to someone doing prototypes on the cheap in a back alley. I was…an experiment that didn’t go how they thought it would. The nerves connected too well to the metal so they can’t take it off without me losing all function. And they can’t cover it with any type of skin without making it look bigger and malformed, so...”
She shrugged and went back to the food. There wasn’t anything else to say about it. She was a freak, some kind of unlicensed cyborg. She’d end up permanently one-armed if anyone from the Fleet caught up with her and realized there hadn’t been an actual doctor behind the prosthetic; they’d rip it off and throw her in prison for benefiting from tech that had no doubt been stolen from a Fleet hospital and “upgraded.” She swallowed a knot in her throat at the prospect and kept on chewing.
At least the steak tasted good. She started on the second.
Violet sat on the floor, tapping her nails against her front teeth. “Interesting. So your career in less-than-legal professions started off auspiciously.”
Gemma frowned as she looked up, mouth full of steak, but paused when she realized there was a glint in Violet’s eyes that could have been... humor? A joke? Had the other woman made a joke? She finished chewing and swallowed, then held up her left hand to waggle the metal fingers. “I’d call it my lucky charm, but... you know.”
Violet smirked and folded her hands in her lap. “Good to know. What other work have you done, between getting your arm amputated and attacking innocent pirates on neutral spaceports?”
“To be fair, no one I’m chasing is ever really innocent,” Gemma said. She pointed the fork at the other Earther. “And you know it. I might not be the victim of all the bullshit that guy has pulled on this ship, but I work on behalf of those who have been wronged. I arrange the meeting between him and whoever wants to have a word with him. That’s all. But no, I’ve tried a variety of things to get by, and none of them paid enough for me to keep my dignity and still eat. Just bounty hunting.”
Another knot tied up her throat as she glanced away and the bite she’d taken turned to ash in her mouth. And there she was, stuck in the same position she’d been in after losing her arm. No way to pay the bills, no place to live, no way to stand on her own. The only way to survive looked more and more like having to sleep with someone just to have a roof over her head. She’d tried it all before. She wasn’t ready to go back to scrounging and scrambling for every damn credit.
“No, Wyzak isn’t innocent. No one on this ship is, I’d guess. Including you and me. But that doesn’t mean any of us deserve to be turned over to the Tyboli.”
“I tried to tell Milo...” Gemma shook herself and pushed away memories of her partner. She had to mourn later. There wasn’t time to grieve, not yet. She couldn’t afford to break down over losing him. “This one bounty from the Tyboli would have meant we didn’t need to take any other bounties for a standard year. We didn’t like the customer, but it was too good to pass up.”
“Which means there will be a hell of a lot of bounty hunters after the rest of the crew,” Violet said slowly. Her attention went somewhere else, enough that Gemma eyed her warily. The other Earther glanced at the door before returning to her pointed assessment of Gemma. “How did you coordinate who would take a bounty? Did the Tyboli hire you directly, or is there some kind of marketplace?”
Gemma wasn’t interested in running a school for bounty hunters. She picked over the tray and tested the vegetables, wanting to ask if the galley could whip up some dessert as well. “There’s a marketplace. Whoever gets the scalp first makes contact and gets the payday.”
“Unless the contact turns on you and refuses to pay, hmm?” Violet’s head tilted. “Is that what happened today? The Tyboli double-crossed you? Or was it because the Sraibur boarded before the deal was complete?”
Gemma didn’t want to think about any of that. She pushed the tray away. “Your pal was there, too. He was the one running around shooting people. I got knocked out of the fight and didn’t see much after we started
to hand over your pal. Your guess is as good as mine.”
The other Earther didn’t buy it, that much Gemma could tell from her expression. But Violet only arched an expressive eyebrow. “You should try to remember more before you talk to Faros. He’s the one you’ve got to convince to let you stay on the ship.”
“Stay on the ship?” Gemma laughed, even though it sounded forced. “Since when am I staying on the ship?”
“Since you don’t have anywhere else to go?” Violet said, unimpressed. “You expect us to just drop you somewhere in ungoverned space?”
“It’s what I would do,” she said under her breath.
Violet got to her feet and brushed off her pants, then picked up the tray with its mostly-empty dishes. “We’re going after the Tyboli. We may or may not catch them, but rest assured that Faros will have very pointed questions for you on what happened and what your plans are.”
“I don’t have plans,” Gemma said. She hated that her voice wavered just a touch, and clenched her jaw to prevent any other hint of emotion from escaping.
“Then you might want to come up with some.” Violet gave her another pointed look, then disappeared into the hall.
The door slid shut behind her.
Gemma stared at it for a long time before flopping back on the bed and covering her eyes. “What the hell do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
No one answered, which was too bad. She groaned. What the hell was she going to do?
Chapter 18
Wyzak
After a few rounds with Nokx, Wyzak didn’t feel any better and he didn’t have any ideas on how to deal with Gemma’s presence on the ship. He had a busted-up face, some bruised ribs, and a new limp, but no good ideas.
Nokx skipped merrily away, apparently no worse for wear, after dragging Wyzak to the sick bay so he could confer with the medical officer. Tvox, at least, typically kept his opinions to himself, and said nothing as he made Wyzak recline in one of the rejuvenator beds. Wyzak grimaced as he moved and the ribs protested, though it could have been from the lingering effects of the stunner blasts he’d absorbed during the fight with the Tyboli rather than Nokx’s fists.